Dad's War
Finding and Telling Your Father's World War II Story
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Last updated: February 10, 2014 - What's New?
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Walter G. Johnston, Jr.

Welcome to the Dad's War home page, created by Wesley Johnston. This site is dedicated to my Dad, Walter G. Johnston, Jr. who was in the Anti-Tank Platoon of Company "B" 38th Armored Infantry Battalion of the 7th Armored Division in World War II, including training in Holland; combat in the defense of St. Vith, Belgium in the Battle of the Bulge; and combat in Germany in the battle to the Rhine and the encirclement and reduction of the Ruhr Pocket.

Please let me know of any failed or improper links that you encounter.

The links to other people's web pages will let you leave the Dad's War web site. The linked sites are not under the control of the Dad's War web site. The Dad's War web site is not responsible for the contents of any linked site or any link contained in a linked site. The Dad's War web site is not responsible for web casting or any other form of transmission received from any linked site. The Dad's War web site provides these links to you only as a convenience, and the inclusion does not imply any endorsement by the Dad's War web site of the the linked site.

First Steps to Finding Your Dad's Story -- Start Here

I have received many requests asking basically the same thing: "How do I find my Dad's story?" Obviously, it is more than a few simple steps (especially for those American GIs -- the majority from both World Wars -- whose personnel files were destroyed in the 1973 fire). But here are the key steps to doing it.

NOTE: This "First Steps" section is aimed at military members in the war. This web page also has information about civilians. So if your father or mother or ... was not in the military or was a member of a special group in or out of the military, jump to here.

Time is the critical factor. Start now to find one of your Dad's buddies before it is too late.

Step 1: Positively identify his unit(s), to as low a level as possible.

If he came home, the best source is his discharge paper. If you do not find it among his papers, then call the VA (phone: (800) 827-1000) if he ever applied for VA benefits. Since they were told that their discharge papers would never be replaced if lost, most men had them legally recorded at the County Recorder's office (the same place that deeds are recorded); so also check the Recorder's office of the county to which he came home. For most men, the unit shown on the discharge was their combat unit. However, for some men who were transferred to other units in order to allow them to come home sooner, the discharge may show the unit with which he came home.

If he died in the war

United States

You can find his branch of service, rank, service number, home county and how he died (KIA = Killed in Action, DOW = Died of Wounds, DNB = Died Non-Battle, etc.) -- but NOT his unit -- by searching for him on the World War II Registry of the National World War II Memorial and looking in the resulting link where the Source is designated "National Archives".

The AFDIL (Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory) Family Outreach Program has been actively collecting mitochondrial DNA from families of MIAs since 1992. Click here to read more about this and find out how to have your family's DNA collected for possible future identification of your MIA family member's remains.

If he died overseas in the Army, Navy or other service, regardless of whether he was ever found and identified or where he is buried, request his Individual Deceased Personnel File (IDPF) from the U. S. Army Human Resources Command. Here is the address to which you should submit your request through Freedom of Information (FOIA) channels:

You can call them at (703) 325-9256, if you have questions, but not to make requests for IDPFs. They require a letter in order to send the IDPF. The letter can also be sent via e-mail to usarmy.knox.hrc.mbx.foia@mail.mil

Your letter to them should include your signed statement of your willingness to pay the Freedom of Information Act fees for the work involved. If you are requesting your relative's IDPF, they will probably not actually charge you. But they cannot do any work to locate the records without this statement from you.

For determining the history of men who died overseas, the IDPF is an extremely valuable record -- the most important record that exists in most cases. The amount of information in the files can vary dramatically. The IDPF will almost always establish his unit and give the information on his burial. In many cases, it will also give valuable information about where and when he died, possibly even including reports of the action in which he died. For men whose remains were never recovered or identified, extremely valuable records of the testimonies of his buddies are usually included, giving extraordinary information about the action, what happened to him, and when they last saw him. Though the information in one IDPF can vary considerably from the information in another and a few of them can contain disappointingly little information, most of them are very useful. There simply is no more valuable record to obtain than the IDPF for most men who died overseas. In some cases, they will not be able to find the record on the first try, and they will suggest that you write back in 6 months. So write again in 6 months, but this time add to the letter that this is your second request, since they were unable to locate the record 6 months earlier.

CAUTION: When you read these files, you are looking at the stark reality of the horror of war and death. The files usually do contain mortuary and medical records, and these may be painful for you to read. This will definitely impact you psychologically, whether you are aware of it or not. It might even reach the point where you feel the need for professional spiritual or psychological help in dealing with it. This is perfectly normal. Be prepared for it.

British Commonwealth (Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, South Africa, United Kingdom)

United States: Remember that the airmen were in the Army or Navy: there was no Air Force as a separate service branch until after the war. For Army, most Associations are at the Division level. So you need to find out what Division his discharge unit (usually Battalion or Regiment) was in. The best source for doing this is Shelby M. Stanton's book "Order of Battle: U. S. Army World War II" from Presidio Press. Try your local library.

U. S. - All Branches - START WITH THIS ONE FOR U. S. UNITS.
This Ben Myers' up-to-date list, posted by Military Network. It has U. S. Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard -- all branches of service.Navigation Tip: Once you are at the site, click Association Lists on the menu at the left.

If you cannot find the unit in the lists above, or if you want more information, try the web pages below.

Air Units

Stalag 13 Aviation Links: This has links to many web pages of aviation units for all nations, not just U.S. It is very comprhensive. You will have to sift through it to find the World War II units, but you will find a great deal there for many of them. -- I know that this link is bad, since AOL abruptly pulled the plug on all member web sites. I am trying to find out if this important web site is going to be resurrected in a new location.

Stalag 13 Aviation Links: This has links to many web pages of aviation units for all nations, not just U.S. It is very comprhensive. You will have to sift through it to find the World War II units, but you will find a great deal there for many of them. -- I know that this link is bad, since AOL abruptly pulled the plug on all member web sites. I am trying to find out if this important web site is going to be resurrected in a new location.

Commonwealth Order of Battle: 1939-1945: This site does NOT have links to veterans' organizations, but it does have the way in which units fit within other units. This is important to know, so that you are looking for all of the possible associations that might exist. Includes: United Kingdom, India, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Union of South Africa, Ireland.

Step 3: Use the telephone! The mail is too slow: none of us are getting younger, and more of the vets are having difficulty writing each year. Time is the critical factor here.

Write to the National Archives at the following address. Request that they send you an inventory of any records that they have for his battalion (or squadron or equivalent lowest-level unit) and also instructions for how to obtain and pay for copies of the records.

National Archives II
8601 Adelphi Road
College Park, MD 20740-6001

The records that will give a narrative account of the unit's monthly progress through the war are what you are looking for: After Action Reports or Unit Histories or similar names. The inventory of the records may also contain intelligence and operations journals, message logs, award citations, or other documents. But for starting out, it is the After Action Report type of record that you want.

The National Archives staff will NOT do research for you. But they will do the copying, so that you can do the research. So do not expect them to pick out specific pages or sections. They will copy an entire folder, and you have to be the one to figure out what is relevant. With the After Action Report type of records, it is almost all relevant if he or she was there at the time of the events being described. It is better for you to have too much copied than it is too little, since you really do not know enough at first to make decisions about what might or might not be relevant in the After Action Reports.

Step 5: Obtain the Morning Reports -- You must know his company (squadron, troop, etc.) to do this most efficiently. For most soldiers, that is on their discharge (step 1 above).

The Morning Reports were daily reports turned in by a company the morning after the day of the report. They are the only records that survive down to the company level. So they are extremely important for all units and especially for support units (engineers, cavalry, tank destroyers, etc.) which often had their companies assigned to different units, so that the battalion headquarters did not know what the company was really doing, so that the battalion-level After Action Reports could not include the company's information.

The Morning Reports show (1) location as of 2400, (2) any men with personnel status changes, (3) a Record of Events for the company for that day (not always present every day), and (4) the strength counts of the company for that day.

While most of the individual personnel records at NPRC were destroyed in the 1973 fire, the organizational records (which include the Morning Reports) were unscathed by the fire. To obtain the Morning Reports, write to the Military Organizational Records Unit of the National Personnel Records Center at the following address.

In the letter, state (1) that you are NOT requesting a search for individual personnel records but that you are requesting copies. Also state (2) that you are requesting copies of the complete Morning Reports, including all attached documents, of Company X of the YYYth Battalion for the months of AAA 194B to CCC 194D. For example, if the soldier was in Company C of the 48th Armored Infantry Battalion of the 7th Armored Division and you know that they went ashore in France in July 1944, write for 3 months of his company's Morning Reports by requesting "Please send me copies of the complete Morning Reports, including all attached documents, of Company C of the 48th Armored Infantry Battalion (7th Armored Division) for the months of July, August and September 1944." Finally state (3) your willingness to pay whatever fees are involved in the copying up to a maximum of $50. It is money very well spent!! I highly recommend obtaining the complete months -- and not just trying to cherry pick for his specific mentions -- for a variety of reasons that I will not go into here.

Step 6: Buy my workshop book if you are going to get into this seriously. Depending on your needs, you should also buy these books:

Radio Interview
On November 7, 2009, I was interviewed about researching your soldier's story in a 45 minute radio show on KMJ Radio in Fresno, CA, as that week's installment in Paul Loefler's "Hometown Heroes" program.
- Click here to listen to the entire interview (MP3).
- Click here to listen to the entire interview (WMA).

Return to top of Dad's War Home PageMy Own Web Pages
These are pages that I have created related to finding and telling my own Dad's story, including the workshops that grew out of that work.

7th Armored Division Document Repository: transcripts of cloover 10,000 pages of WWII documents - mostly 7AD but also other units involved in the same battles AND some very valuable finding aids for any theater or unit of WWII

Butson Family Newsletter: the 10 issues I published from 1979-1987, covering Butsons on all continents (yes, that includes Antarctica)

Return to top of Dad's War Home Page
The rest of the information on this page consists of the following lists of valuable links to other web pages that can help you find and tell your Dad's story. But don't overlook the very important first steps above.Telling Someone's World War II Story
There are four groups of information here. All are web pages, except for the single group of books.

EX-P.O.W. #12048 Rita Loftus' page on her Dad Ray Sherman (Company K, 179th Regiment, 45th Infantry Division), captured at Anzio in Italy[NOTE: The provider for this domain runs annoying commercials that you cannnot block. So when you go to the site (or a new page within the site) a completely un-related commercial page comes up. Just wait for it to go away, and you will be able to get to the site (or the new page within the site).]

1LT George W. Mears Dwight Mears' page on his grandfather, 1st Lt. George Mears, who flew in the 511th Squadron, 351st Bombardment Group of the 94th Bombardment Wing, 1st Air Division, 8th Army Air Force (Europe) -- of special interest: when his plane was hit, they made it over the Swiss border and were interned in neutral Switzerland for the rest of the war

"A Tribute To My Dad
" Sheldon Rhodes's site on his father Harold Rhodes, who flew 29 missions with the 8th Air Force's 389th Bomb Group (Heavy), 566th Bomb Squadron (European Theater, based in England)

Eugene Enderson Frank Saxton's page with his friend's memoir of the 728th Bomb Squadron, 452nd Bomb Group (8th Air Force, based in Deopham Green, England)

Spitfire Wingman from Tennessee Jim Haun, Jr's web page on his Dad's experiences as an American assigned to the RAF (12th Observation Squadron, 485 New Zealand Squadron)

The Walter Washington Train Memorial Page
: Linda Frisina's page on her Dad's experiences with 96th Division, 382 Infantry, 2nd Battalion, Company F, wounded in combat at Leyte in the Philippines in October 1944.

B-29 "For the Luvva Mike": John Nightingale's page on his Dad (radar officer) Stan Nightingale's B-29 crew, the "For the Luvva Mike" (21st Bomb Squadron of the 501st Bomb Group of the 315th Bomb Wing of the 20th Air Force), who flew the last bombing raid on Japan -- after the bombing of Nagasaki

Scott Turow's Ordinary Heroes: A Novel Farrar Strauss Giroux, 2005. Click here for the Amazon.com page on the book. This is fiction, but it makes for a very good read. It is the story of a journalist's search for his father's WWII story, which turns out to be quite surprising, even if it is a bit larger than life for what most of us will find in our own searches for our father's WWII story.

Howard "Mutt" McCord's reminiscences of training days at Camp Croft, SC, in combat with the Heavy (81mm) Mortar Platoon of Headquarters Company of the 38th Armored Infantry Battalion (7th Armored Division), and as a POW in Europe

EX-P.O.W. #12048 diary of Ray Sherman (Company K, 179th Regiment, 45th Infantry Division), captured at Anzio in Italy[NOTE: The provider for this domain runs annoying commercials that you cannnot block. So when you go to the site (or a new page within the site) a completely un-related commercial page comes up. Just wait for it to go away, and you will be able to get to the site (or the new page within the site).]

Air

Quentin Aanenson's "A Fighter Pilot's Story": This is the man to whom we all owe a great debt, since without his very moving video history of his experiences, shown on Public Broadcasting, I may never have begun my own quest that led to these Dad's War web pages. (391st Fighter Squadron of the 366th Figher Group of 9th Air Force)

American Battle Monuments Commission: information on men buried in overseas U. S. Military Cemeteries, as well as those whose bodies were never recovered (note that this site sometimes is incredibly slow or actually times out; try it again some other day if that happens)

ww2history@hotmail.com (Mark Zangara): will do WWII research at the National Archives, if you know the complete name of the unit; he will charge at cost plus a reasonable charge to cover his time; watch for a link here to his anticipated website - for now, this is just an e-mail link

&quotDad's War: A Workshop on Finding and Telling Your Father's World War II Story &quot by Wesley Johnston (for information and ordering, see Dad's War workshop book).

&quotTouchstones: A Guide to Records, Rights and Resources for Families of American World War II Casualties&quot by Ann Bennett Mix ($19.95 through the American WWII Orphans Network). If your father died in the war, this is the book (and the organization) for you.

&quotHow to Locate Anyone Who Is or Has Been in the Military&quot by Lt. Col. Richard S. Johnson and &quotWorld War II Military Records: A Family Historian's Guide&quot by Debra Johnson Knox from MIE Publishing (Phone: (800) 937-2133). If you are trying to locate one of your Dad's buddies who is not in their unit's veterans' association, this is an important book for you.

These books are also comprhensive sources of VERY useful information, though only a small part of what they contain is relevant to any one soldier's experience.

&quotWorld War II Sites in the United States: A Tour Guide & Directory&quot by Richard E. Osborne, published by Riebel-Roque Publishing Co.; 6027 Catlebar Circle; Indianapolis, IN. Click here for Amazon.com's page on the book. This is an amazingly thorough collection of information on every camp, air field, museum, POW camp, or any other location at which your Dad may have been in the States during the war. Whenever I am traveling, I always look over this book to see what places of interest I might add to my trip.

Department of Defence:
This used to be the place to write for individual soldiers' WWII records. (Postal address: PO Box E33; Queen Victoria Terrace; Canberra, ACT 2600) But now the National Archives (above) has them.

Return to top of Dad's War Home PageSpecial Groups
While it is true that most of the Allied troops were adult white males, the war affected many other groups - in the war zone and at home, military and civilian. These are useful pages for information on people in some of these groups, which also include the troops who were captured.

WWII United Kingdom Evacuees Registry: register your own evacuation or search for others - This link is not working as of December 2005, but I am leaving it here since it is such a valuable resource and may surface again.

Lost in the Victory: Reflections of American War Orphans of World War II by Susan Johnson Hadler and Ann Bennett Mix, Edited by Cal Christman (Feb. 1998; University of North Texas Press) $32.50 plus $3.00 shipping - order from the AWON (American WWII Orphans Network) Bookstore, PO Box 4369, Bellingham WA 98227.

The Diary of Alice Mary: A Factual Childhood Diary Written During the World War II Years by Joe Connally for His Young Motherless Child With Quotations Throughout This Book by Alice Mary Connally Fisk (Dec. 2003; 1stBooks) Click here for the Amazon.com page.

Joe Romero's War Pages: Joe Roemero was a young boy grows up in the Philippines, during World War II. His memoir on these pages gives a unique perspective on the war in the Philippines. - This link is not working as of December 2005, but I am leaving it here, in hopes that it will surface again, since it was a very interesting site.

Quakers
Members of the Society of Friends (popularly known as Quakers) and of the American Friends Service Committee in Europe provided wartime help to many refugees, as well as post-war relief.

War Zone Civilian Victims
Sadly this section could fill screen after screen. So a small sample are included here. German (the Dresden Bombings; slaughter by Soviet troops) and Japanese (Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings) casualties occurred as well. War really is hell for everyone.

Broad Coverage World War II Sites
These are some good pages for finding out about World War II in general, including jump sites that have a lot of links to other World War II pages. There are many more pages; so use your search engine to find more.

Institute for
World War II and the Human Experience: This is a university-backed effort to to preserve the experiences of the common soldier, sailor, marine who went to war. Unfortunately, only some photographs are available online. So this link is here more for those of you who are veterans or know a veteran to make you aware of this collection and the possibility that you might contribute to it.

Places to Post and Read Messages on World War II
These are some useful sites for making and reading postings from others interested in World War II. These may turn up some useful information, but they tend to be less useful than finding the right unit association.

Places to Find Your Dad's Wartime Buddies
If you have not been able to find one of your Dad's wartime buddies through the veterans' associations (see First Steps above), then posting messages on bulletin boards has limited usefulness. So here are some sources of information on how to find people. If you know their full name and where their home town was, you can start from there. Unusual names are the easiest ones to find, if the person is still alive.

WWII Veterans Search: This is a lot more than just a place to post information. Ron Bereznicki has included a lot of useful information for finding American, British, and Canadian WWII veterans. - This is a dead link as of December 2005, but I am leaving it in case Ron's site surfaces again.

If you suspect one of your Dad's wartime buddies has died, you may want to search for him in the Social Security Death Index, which Ancestry.Com has made available for free searches. Be warned that this is a graphics-heavy web site that can be very slow to use, even with a high speed modem.